


The Right Person at the Wrong Time

by ScribblerQueen1



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Break Up, Depression, Eating Disorders, Getting Back Together, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:20:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26239987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScribblerQueen1/pseuds/ScribblerQueen1
Summary: Sometimes you meet the right person at the wrong time, Chris sets Yuuri up on a blind date with Victor Nikiforov and they hit it off. But, after dating for over two years, Yuuri can no longer handle all the pressure that come with dating the world's top skater and they break up. Victor thinks he's okay with it until he hears that Yuuri is retiring.
Relationships: Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov
Comments: 20
Kudos: 142





	1. Beginning of the End

Yuuri never thought that he would date Victor Nikiforov, his childhood idol.

He’d grown up in a small town in Japan, far from Russia where Victor lived and considered himself to be a mediocre skater compared to the man that he had idolized most of his life. To even skate on the same ice rink as him had seemed practically unachievable. But with most of his spare time spent on the ice and sacrifices made he had come to start competing on the international level of professional figure skating.

Still at that point, Victor was still out of his reach. He moved abroad, to the states, in order to train and work on his skating. Still hoping for that chance, when over two years ago he got it.

Yuuri had been one of the selected representatives to compete at worlds in figure skating. He’d been nervous about competing among what were the best skaters from all over the world and rather distracted while warming up for practice at the rink a few days before the competition would start officially. Then he’d been caught off guard by one Christophe Giacometti.

They’d competed against each other since juniors and as a result, Chris was one of the few skaters that really knew Yuuri. Chris was often incited by Yuuri’s shy nature to try and loosen him up at competitions, so it was no surprise when he suddenly felt a hand casually grope him from behind as he was doing his stretches. 

“Great as always, Yuuri.” He could practically hear the grin in his voice.

“Chris, how many times do I have to tell you not to grab my ass?” Yuuri complained, unfortunately used to the situation.

“I don’t know, how many times has it been already? I don’t remember. It’s hard to remember such things when I have something so _distracting_ in front of me.” He practically purred in his ear. Yuuri sighed and moved out of his grasp and turned around to look at him disappointingly. 

“Yuuri, that’s rude.”

He gave him a pointed look, ignoring the complaint entirely. “So, what brings you over here, besides your usual bad habits?”

The gleam in Chris’s eyes told him he was up to something. “I just wanted to introduce you to someone, and by introduce, I mean that I’ve set you up on a blind date.”

This sent Yuuri into a sputtering shock. “Chris! You can’t just set me up on a blind date with someone without asking!”

Chris always had a way of causing trouble for him and there were times that he regretted choosing to maintain a friendly acquaintance with the man. This was definitely one of those moments and he was starting to wonder if maybe he could figure out how to time travel in the immediate future to avoid this mess entirely.

“Now don’t be like that.” Chris chides him. “I would never set you up with someone without asking if I wasn’t one hundred percent sure that you would want to go out with them and that they would be interested in you. Please have some faith in me.”

“Who would you even set me up? I can’t think of anyone you know that would be interested in dating me. Wait. Did you set me up with another skater?” The horrifying thought of having to compete against someone after having a terrible date with them crossed his mind and even further cemented in Yuuri’s mind that this was a bad idea.

“You’ll find out when you two meet up tonight. I’ll text you later with more information, I’ve got to practice, see you!” Chris waves and quickly begins to retreat back to where his coach is.

“Chris! Get back here! Explain!”

Despite his many complaints and attempts to abandon this disaster entirely, Yuuri finds himself waiting outside of a fancy restaurant wearing a scarf that Chris had later given him as an indicator for his date to locate him. He could just leave right now and not go on the date but then he would feel terrible about being a no show and Chris would confront him afterwards; so he waited.

Yuuri glances at his reflection in the window behind him adjusting his hair, making sure that it looked nice.

“Chris was right, you are cute.” He jumps and whips his around, then decides that he must be dreaming because Victor Nikiforov is standing right in front of him, calling him cute. He must be out cold on the ice somewhere with a cracked skull from a failed jump during practice, probably from being nervous about worlds. That’s it. There’s no way that Chris set him up on a date with Victor.

“Victor.” It’s the only word he can manage to get out right now.

“Surprise! I’m your date!” Wait, date. That meant that Chris had set him up with Victor.

Suddenly he recalls what Chris had told him earlier.

_"I would never set you up with someone without asking if I wasn’t one hundred percent sure that you would want to go out with-”_

It suddenly sends him back several months earlier, when Yuuri and Chris had been competing in the qualifiers for the Grand Prix, Chris had snuck up on him much like he had earlier except he had been on his phone. Caught off guard, Chris had managed to see his background screen with Victor’s face plastered on it. After a bit of teasing, he had correctly guessed that Yuuri had a crush on the other skater. It was only now, months after the fact, that he recalled that Chris was also friends with Victor.

Yuuri felt his face heat up and he was sure that it was bright red.

The date did not end up in total disaster like he predicted either. After he managed to introduce himself to Victor they went inside the restaurant where Victor had become enamored with him quite quickly. Despite Yuuri’s nervousness, he managed to pry out information from him bit by bit. They talked about Yuuri’s hometown, his family, friends, how he started skating, about ballet, how he was training in Detroit, going to college there and in turn Victor shared things about himself. His childhood idol was so different in person and not in a bad way.

By the time Victor managed to convince him to show him pictures of Vicchan, he was surprisingly relaxed around him. He found himself regretting turning down dessert with the upcoming competition but they’d agreed that it wasn’t the best idea. After Victor had slipped his card to the waiter and paid for the dinner despite protests. Neither of them wanted the night to end and they wandered a bit after the dinner, continuing to talk to each other until Yakov called Victor to chew him out for staying out so late. It was a reluctant end to their date. The two of them meandered around the elevators for as long as they could push it before someone might come looking for them.

They entered the elevator and the doors closed as they kept sneaking glances.

“Yuuri, would it be alright if I kissed you goodnight?” Victor suddenly asked as the doors opened to Yuuri’s floor. His eyes widened and with a brief pause he nodded.

Victor, slightly hesitant, leaned it and then Yuuri did. It was soft and a new thrilling experience. Offhandedly he remembers the doors closing, and the jolt of the elevator moving again threw them off a little but Victor put out one hand on the wall and steadied them while holding on to Yuuri. They kept kissing as the elevator rode up to Victor’s floor completely enthralled in the moment.

Eventually, the doors opened again and they parted. They were both slightly out of breath, cheeks flushed pink and they smiled at each other. Victor stole one more kiss before standing back, his grip on Yuuri’s hand lingering for a moment.

“Goodnight.” They kept looking at each other until the doors shut again and Yuuri hit the button for his floor after standing there for a few minutes in the silent elevator completely in a daze.

The next day at the ice rink Chris watched the two, completely smug about the whole ordeal, teasing them about making sure to thank him at their wedding in the future.

Yuuri had done unexpectedly better at worlds that year, coming in at fourth place a few points shy of third and making the podium. Victor had cheered him on the whole time and for once Yuuri was caught up in an entirely new set of emotions while he skated. Everything about their relationship was world changing.

For the past two years it was everything that he could have ever wanted in a relationship with Victor Nikiforov. Getting to know him, go on dates, kiss him, share intimate moments with him, both physical and emotional. He couldn’t have imagined anything else.

Yuuri never thought that he would date Victor Nikiforov, he also never thought that he would choose to break up with Victor.

Dating Victor was a dream but he never thought that it would be a double edged sword as his nightmare as well.

With dating Victor came the pressure that he faced as the number one competitive figure skater. Yuuri never thought about all the attention that he got and what it meant until he was directly in the same spotlight as Victor Nikiforov’s boyfriend. Before this he’d never had this much attention as a skater. It was a shock to the system at first and Victor helped navigate him through it, setting him up with someone to handle his public relations at a higher level than his coach Celestino could manage.

More exposure meant taking more time to maintain his image, which he didn’t have much of to begin with. Prior to dating Victor he barely touched social media or interacted with the media. Suddenly he was expected to regularly post to social media to please his sponsors and the new exposure brought him new sponsors which meant he was now doing more work with them including advertisement which was new territory for him. He felt so awkward being asked to model and promote products.

He went from doing one or two interviews during competition to doing them on the regular. Anytime he did something they wanted a comment or an interview, anytime Victor did something they wanted his reaction, anything about their relationship they wanted to know, any rumours, interview. They wanted interviews all the time.

It also meant that it opened Yuuri to more criticism. He was judged harsher on every mistake he made on the ice whether it was during competition or practice. Suddenly being Victor’s boyfriend meant he should be a perfect skater because Victor was perfect, he was the best after all. If Victor made a mistake on the ice, it was also his fault. _Was he distracting Victor?_ The comments would ask. 

The criticism was also no longer just about his skating, it was about his relationship with Victor. _Is he good enough for Victor? He’s not as good looking as Victor. He’s using Victor. He must be cheating on Victor. Victor’s not really serious with someone like him._ Or they picked apart everything about him. _He looks like he’s gained weight. Isn’t he supposed to be an athlete? He’s just some nobody from Japan. There’s nothing special about him. Ugh, look at those glasses, gross._

After two years the emotional expense was taking a toll. He couldn’t do it anymore. It felt like every second he was on the edge of another anxiety attack. Depression was weighing him down and he couldn’t help but hate himself. He felt like a void had swallowed him whole and left nothing but an empty shell. It took every ounce of strength he had to just get up in the morning.

At the same time he could see that Victor’s heart just wasn’t in it anymore. He could tell that the smiles were just him trying to save face and every action seemed forced lately. Victor was too nice to end things, he would have to be the one.Bombing the Grand Prix final while Victor broke another world record just confirmed his decision. 

They had gone back to Victor’s room after the banquet when he finally decided he needed to end it.

“Victor, I can’t do this anymore.” 

Yuuri looked at him and watched as he understood the meaning of the words. He was blank, betraying no emotions. There was no anger or tears, just resigned acceptance.

“Okay.”

That was the end. Their last conversation is about how they wanted to handle things publicly. Ultimately, they would keep things quiet, hopefully until the end of the season. If no one had noticed by then or brought up a break up they would release a statement that they had mutually decided to part ways and that there was no ill will between them. If it came to light they would just go ahead as planned and do it earlier.

They part ways at the airport pretending nothing has happened between them and Yuuri gets on his flight back to Detroit.

Phichit can tell by the look on his face when he walks into their apartment that something is wrong and he can’t hold in anymore. Tears streamed down his face and sobs wracked his throat.

“I broke up with him.” Yuuri comes out with it hours after he can’t cry anymore and his voice is hoarse. 

“What, why?” Phichit just looks at him in shock, the thought that Yuuri would ever breakup with Victor is like him giving up Instagram.

“I can’t take the pressure anymore, Phichit. It’s all too much.”

His own heart breaks at the words. “It’ll be okay.”

Yuuri bombs nationals two weeks after breaking up with Victor. No one really bothers him with interviews, he’s done for the season anyway. When Yuuri doesn’t show up to the European championships to cheer on Victor the news that they’ve broken up hits the media.

He figured that it would and he sets all of his accounts to private and turns off notifications just prior to the event taking place. Yuuri is too busy finishing up his college degree to really worry about the relationship that ended months ago. He’s already notified his publicist that he won’t be doing any interviews in regards to the matter.

Yuuri knows by the time he’s editing his final paper that he’s done with skating. He talks with Celestino to inform him of his decision. He seems to have seen this coming and wishes him well but adds that if he changes his mind, he’s welcome back at any time.Phichit tries to convince him to stay but he tells him that he just wants to go home and finally have some peace. He can probably see it in his face, the exhaustion of it all and he concedes but not without telling him the same thing as Celestino did.

Phichit helps him pack up all of his things in the days before his graduation ceremony and throws a party of two for them because he knows Yuuri doesn’t need the stress but gets him pleasantly drunk and they watch comedies until they dissolve in heaps of laughter at every word.

Yuuri is happy to be home once he gets off the plane and finds the train ride soothing and familiar as he finishes the final part of his journey.

“Yuuri!” He’s surprised to hear Minako call him, who is waiting at the train station when he reaches Hasetsu.

“Minako-sensei, what are you doing here?” Yuuri asks once he’s close enough.

“What am I doing here? You think I wouldn’t come to welcome you home after five years of being gone? Of course I would, besides this way you don’t have to take a shitty cab after all that traveling.” Minako gives him a large hug that he’s grateful for.

She rambles on about things that have changed since he left as she takes his bags from him and puts them in her car and for the short ride to Yuu-topia. As soon as he gets out of the car the front door opens and he hears the familiar excited barks of Vicchan as he rushes out as a blur of fur to greet him.

“Vicchan!” Yuuri bends down and scoops up his beloved poodle, who immediately covers him in slobbery kisses. He laughs at the enthusiasm and presses his face into his fur, holding him close glad to be reunited after all these years.

When he walks inside he finds that his mother is waiting there for him.

“I’m home.” Yuuri smiles at her.

“Welcome home, Yuuri.” He gives his mom a hug and kiss while still holding Vicchan which causes him to interfere for more of his own wet kisses.

He takes off his coat and backpack and dedicates his first moments of being home giving his dog every ounce of affection that he can muster up despite being jet lagged. Mari comes out and greets him and he gets a hug from her. She takes his bags from the front entrance and brings them to his room and says he should go soak in the hot springs.

Vicchan leaves him alone for the first time and allows him to go take his bath in the hot springs. It’s an odd time of the day, so no one else is in there which is nice. He takes his time enjoying the hot springs and finally pulls himself out when he starts to feel overheated. His faithful poodle is waiting for him when he exits the bathing area and he picks him back up and heads for his room.

His door is already open and Mari is being helpful by putting away some of his clothes from his suitcase.

“You didn’t need to do that.” She just rolls her eyes at him.

“It’s fine.You’re my brother, who’s home for the first time in five years. You're exhausted anyway.” Yuuri decides to concede on that battle because Mari wouldn’t do it if she didn’t want to.

It’s then that he notices that the walls of his room are bare and she notices him looking at them.

“I took them down. I figured you might not want to see them right now but I’ve put them away somewhere safe for now.” Mari pauses and looks at her brother studying him. “You’ve lost some weight.”

Instinctively, Yuuri moves his arms around himself as if to hide it. “Uh, yeah. Well, thanks for helping with my stuff and the posters. I think I’m going to lay down for now.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to eat first, you’ll probably sleep for a while.” His sister asks him.

“Yeah, I’ll be fine. I just want to sleep.” 

Mari leaves and he shuts the door. Vicchan jumps up on the bed after he pulls back the covers and he gets in pulling the covers over himself. Yuuri watches as the poodle makes himself comfortable and curls up next to him. Offhandedly he thinks about Makkachin and wonders if he misses Yuuri too.

The larger poodle was always so happy to see Yuuri during his and Victor’s almost daily video chats and even more in person when Victor brought him traveling or when Yuuri was visiting him in St.Petersburg and staying at his apartment. It must be confusing for him not to see or hear Yuuri anymore.

But he and Victor are no longer dating, so he has to move on from those types of thoughts. He can’t dwell on the past anymore. Yuuri had made his decision when he chose to break things off with Victor. He had made his bed, now he has to lie in it. He sighs and closes his eyes drifting off to sleep.

Across the ocean, Victor is waking up and going about his daily routine and making breakfast for himself and Makkachin. He sits down with his food and scrolls through social media posts. He stops as he sees another post speculating on his and Yuuri’s unexpected breakup. As he reads it he can’t even answer the question himself to be honest.

It’s not the first breakup he’s had, in fact most of his relationships have ended with the other party breaking up with him. Usually it’s because he’s crushed whatever image his partner had of him and they move on. But with Yuuri he hadn’t been in the best state of mind when the breakup blindsided him. He just couldn’t enjoy skating anymore and it affected him to the point that he barely reacted to it. But in the aftermath he realizes Yuuri never told him why, he just said _I can’t do this anymore._

Makkachin whines at him and he looks up to see him nosing at his phone, but he’s not sure what he wants. His hand reaches over to pet his head and scratch his ears as Victor looks back at a photo of the two on the post. He feels a wave of regret as he looks at Yuuri’s face.

“What went wrong?” He asks himself out loud, Makkachin can’t give him an answer.


	2. The Fallout

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yuuri's retirement is announced, and it causes a stir.

Once again Victor is the world champion for the fifth year in a row. It’s a hollow victory though, he doesn’t feel like he’s earned it. It’s more like they’ve given it to him because they just expect it now.

He’d rather not deal with the press right now but he has to as the gold medalist. Lately the only thing anyone really wants to know about is his and Yuuri’s breakup. To the media there is no thing as a _mutual_ breakup. Someone has to be at fault, something had to have caused it. Months later after the breakup it stings now more than when it happened and the regret he has continues to grow the more time goes on. 

They keep asking all the same questions as usual and he gives the usual preprepared statements when everything seems to come to a stand still as the next question blindsides him.

“Victor, do you have anything to say about Katsuki Yuuri’s retirement announcement?”

“What?” There’s no other way to react to that news. The idea of Yuuri retiring at the age of twenty four as Japan’s best skater is just absurd, there’s an even bigger commotion now. Some people are pulling out their phones to confirm it, other reporters are shouting out their own questions about the matter.

He just sits there, shocked, unable to comprehend how such a thing occurred. Yuuri is an amazing skater, sure his season ended early this year after his unexpected scores at the grand prix final and nationals but he knew what Yuuri was capable of. It doesn’t make any sense.

Yakov has enough sense to end the conference right then and there. He pulls Victor away from the table and gets them away as fast as possible without causing too much of a scene. Once they’re far enough away Victor pulls out his phone and types in Yuuri’s name and it pulls up several articles all stating that JSF had announced a list of skaters that intended to no longer compete and that Yuuri’s name had been among them. There was no reason listed and Yuuri’s publicist had given no reason either. It was leading to a ton of speculation already.

"Vitya, did you have any idea that he planned on doing this?” Yakov asks him and he shakes his head.

“I don’t understand, why would he quit?” He’s still looking at the articles on the phone hoping that he’ll read something that’ll give him a clue.

Yakov is looking at Victor in concern, until now he hadn’t shown any sort of reaction since he and Yuuri had broken up. Victor hadn’t mentioned it to anyone until after the European championships, a considerable amount of time after the pair had broken up. When he finally told them he acted so nonchalant about it. But he had seen how much Victor loved Yuuri and it didn’t make any sense. He expected him to be inconsolable about it, trying to fix things, unable to focus on skating, really anything other than this vague indifference to it.

Yurio had more of a reaction than Victor did in regards to his own breakup. Yurio despite being a moody and angsty teenager who claimed to hate everyone he was absolutely attached to the Japanese skater. He screamed and shouted at Victor, berating him for hurting Yuuri, breaking his heart and whatever else assumptions he had made about why the two had broken up. He refused to talk or acknowledge his rink mate until he “fixed his mistake” is what the younger skater had screamed at him. No one had been able to contact Yuuri since then either, he’d just dropped off the face of the earth as far as they were all concerned.

Things had been tense at the rink ever since. Yakov had really liked Yuuri and he thought that it was a shame that the two couldn’t work through whatever had happened for both their sake. Now he wondered if Yuuri decided that whatever happened was worth throwing away such a promising career.

There was a loud angry pounding at their hotel room door and Yakov knew without looking that it was Yurio.

“Can you quiet down, we don’t need anybody hearing anything!” He scolds him as he opens the door. Yurio ignores him and barrels right past him over to Victor.

“WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO! HE’S RETIRING! YOU’RE TELLING ME THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU BREAKING HIS HEART?” He has no intention of quieting down about this, every part of his body is filled with rage over the news.

Victor doesn’t answer him, he just keeps looking at the articles.

“ANSWER ME, DAMMIT!” Yakov decides enough is enough and drags Yurio back out of the room so that he can talk some reason into, it doesn’t stop him from screaming at Victor the entire way out the door and down the hall.

He’s alone in the room just sitting on the bed looking at his phone. Victor pulls up Yuuri in his contact list and hits the call button. He hasn’t attempted to contact him since they broke up. It rings briefly and then he gets the same automated message that everyone else had been getting, apologizing that the number he was trying to call was unavailable.

He finds that he can no longer pull up their messages from social media anymore either. Yuuri has completely cut him off and he still has no idea why.

Yuuri lives in blissful ignorance of the chaos that he is causing with the announcement of his retirement due to his self imposed blackout from social media and general internet use. He wants to slip away from it all and live in obscurity again.

That lasts approximately two weeks before Yurio tracks him down and shows up in Hasetsu.

Mari pulls Yuuri from the kitchen where he’s helping their mom cook and tells him that he has a visitor. He’s confused as he walks out to the entrance and sees Yurio standing there shivering from the surprise snowfall that he had trudged through to get there because he had expected Hasetsu to be warmer and had not brought his coat.

“Yurio, what are you doing here?” He asks the shivering teenager.

“Yuuri!” Yuuri quickly finds himself with his arms full of the freezing teenager and shivers at the contact. “I missed you.” He hears him mumble into his shirt.

“I missed you too.” He softly murmurs back to him. 

As they’re standing there he hears some soft meows coming from where Yurio’s luggage sits at the door and they sound very indignant.

“Did you bring Potya?” Yuuri asks as he looks over to see what looks like a cat carrier on top of the suitcase.

“Of course, he missed you too.” Yurio says, like it's the most obvious thing in the world. 

“Come on, let’s get you two warmed up.”

Yuuri shows him to the bathing area and explains how it works. After that he talks with his mom to see about setting up a room for Yurio and in the meantime takes the luggage and cat carrier to his room. Vicchan is very curious as he releases Potya from the carrier and Yuuri watches to make sure there’s no issues between them. They sniff at each other for a good moment and then seem satisfied.

Potya then decides to stake his claim on Yuuri’s bed and curls up on the pillow, Vicchan just watches curiously, tilting his head.

He feels alright with leaving them alone and heads back out to see if Yurio is done in the onsen. It doesn’t take too long for him to emerge, all bundled into his robe.

“I’m hungry.” Yurio complains almost immediately, brash as usual.

“I’m sure my mom can make you something. Is there anything in particular you want?” Yuuri asks as he leads him out into the main area.

“What about that thing that’s your favorite?” He gestures with his hands as Yurio tries to remember what Yuuri’s favorite food is called.

“Katsudon.”

“Yeah, that.That’s what I want to try.” 

Yurio sits down at a table while Yuuri heads back into the kitchen and gives his mom the request. He comes back out to sit with Yurio while he waits.

“So, this is where you grew up? It’s really nice.” Yurio comments as he looks around. Yuuri is pretty aware that he’s using this conversation to avoid other topics, like why him and Victor broke up and why is he retiring, at least for the moment. He knows that Yuuri doesn’t like confrontation and probably wants to save his questions for a less public setting like the middle of the dining area.

They chat about nothing in particular for the next few minutes until Yuuri’s mom walks out with two bowls of Katsudon and sets them out in front of them.

“Ah, Kaa-san, I didn’t ask for one.” Yuuri responds once she sets a bowl down in front of him.

“I thought you might be hungry anyway, I haven’t seen you eat lunch yet.” She smiles at him and he just accepts the bowl anyway.

Yurio takes a good whiff of the bowl and groans, partly drooling at the smell. He’s quick to start digging in and devours most of the Katsudon pretty fast. He moans about how good the food is as he swallows another bite and looks over to see that Yuuri has barely touched his food.

“What’s the matter? It’s your favorite, right? Why aren’t you eating?” He looks at him in concern.

“Oh, I’m just not that hungry right now. I’ll probably save this for later.” Yuuri tries to smile reassuringly but it falls short.

Yurio pauses, chewing his food slowly, and studies him for a moment. He looks like he wants to say something but decides against it at the last moment, then continues to silently finish his own bowl.

Once he’s finished he thanks Yuuri’s mother for the meal and then looks around the room.

“Where’s Potya?”

“Ah, I put him in my room while we get a room ready for you. I didn’t want him to try and suddenly run out the door or bother the guests.” Yuuri explains to him.

“Thank you for taking care of him.” He replies back and then adds in quietly, “Can I stay with you in your room instead? I really missed you.”

It’s an indirect way of telling Yuuri that he wants their usual cuddle session that he’s missed out on these last few months. Despite acting standoffish most of the time, Yuuri had learned after a while that Yurio actually craved affection from others and had a tendency to be needy but that he was bad about asking for it. He learned quickly how to interpret what Yurio really wanted when asking for things and would try to be the one to initiate so that he would know that Yuuri was fine with it.

“Sure, if that’s what you want.”

Yurio is already sluggish as they head to Yuuri’s room and he clings to the other’s arm, slightly resting his head against his shoulder. Potya looks up as they enter and makes a pleased chirp at the return of his owner, Vicchan has curled up near the kitten and thumps his tail on the bed.

They gently coax the animals to move and Yurio scoops up Potya and holds him close to his chest as he scooches onto the bed and tugs at Yuuri to hurry up and cuddle him. He lets out a small chuckle at the gesture and does what he wants him to. Once he lays down, Yurio curls up tight against him, putting his head on his chest while stroking Potya’s fur.

“Yuuri, please don’t retire.” The words come out after a few moments of silence between them.

“Yura,I’ve already made up my mind-”

“Then change it! I don’t care if Victor broke your heart, you shouldn’t give up skating because of him. If it were me, I would crush him so hard he wouldn’t even think about skating ever again!” He rants in frustration at the situation.

“Yura, I didn’t retire because of him.” Yuuri corrects him.

“You really expect me to believe that. You two breakup without saying anything, then your season goes to shit and you retire! What else am I supposed to think?” Yurio growls out, and Potya decides that he doesn’t want to be in the middle of this and jumps out of his arms and off the bed.

“He broke your heart, so you should break his!.”

“I’m the one that broke up with Victor.” Yurio stops and stares at him, mouth open wide just gaping at the words that leave Yuuri’s mouth.

“What? But you were so disgustingly in love with him. Haven’t you been pining over that bastard since you were a kid? That doesn’t make any sense.”

Yuuri isn’t surprised that Yurio is shocked by the revelation about how his and Victor’s relationship ended. Even a year ago, if someone had told him that he would be the one to end things with Victor he would have called them absurd. There’s no way he would dump the man that he was so in love with. At least not without a good reason and even then he might not believe it.

“What did he do? Why did you decide to break up with him?” Yurio is completely lost on the matter.

“He didn’t do anything, Yura. I just couldn’t do it anymore.”

“I don’t understand.”

Yuuri grimaced as he looked at Yurio. “It’s complicated.”

“No it’s not, that’s what people say when they just don’t want to explain why. You know why, you just don’t want to tell me.” He argued back with Yuuri and a part of him knew that Yurio was right but how could he admit that he cracked under the pressure, that he believed all those things that people wrote about him.

When Yuuri doesn’t reply, Yurio huffs and turns away from him.

“Fine, don’t tell me, but I’m not letting you retire either way! You’re just being stupid, both of you!” 

Yuuri waits to see if he’s going to try and say anymore but after a while he notices that Yurio’s breathing has evened out and a quick check tells him that he has definitely fallen asleep. He sighs and gets up, grabbing his phone as he goes out into the hallway with Vicchan following him.

He scrolls until he finds Yakov’s name in his contact list and then hits the call button putting the phone to his ear, waiting for him to pick up.

“Katsuki, I wasn’t expecting for you to call me, after everything that’s happened.” Yakov is quick to say once he picks.

“Yeah, I wasn’t planning on it either but Yura showed up in Hasetsu and I thought I’d let you know that he was here since he probably didn’t tell you.” He manages to cut to the chase instead of making it more awkward than it already is with small pleasantries. 

There’s a deep sigh and some Russian curse words muttered that Yuuri recognizes. “I thought it was strange he hasn’t been at the rink despite the fact we just started the off season. I was hoping he was just avoiding Victor but of course he has to leave the country and cause trouble. Don’t worry I’ll deal with it.”

“Ah, you don’t have to fly out and get him right away or anything, just give him a few days. He’s upset about, well, everything and he missed me. At least let him have some time before you punish him for taking off so suddenly.” He tries to placate Yakov, knowing how tough he can be when it comes to his skater’s antics.

There’s another sigh, some mumbling that he can’t quite make out, then a resigned “ _Fine_.”

“Thank you, even though I know how much stress this is causing you.” To be fair, Yakov claimed that all of his skaters caused him stress and were equally responsible for his hair loss.

There’s a pause of silence, because there’s not much to say except for the one thing they’ve been avoiding since the beginning of this call.

“Katsuki, I’ve trained many skaters over the years.” There’s another pause. “You’re a good skater, I know it. I know that you have trouble believing it but if you retire now, you’ll end up regretting it.”

Yuuri looks down at the floor, Vicchan stares up at him tilting his head in curiosity. He’s not the first person to try and convince him that this is a mistake. He wonders, desperately, what they see that he doesn’t. Or maybe they just don’t see what he’s seeing?

“I just can’t do it anymore.” It’s that line that he keeps repeating to everyone, but what does that really mean?

“You say that like somethings wrong. Did you injure yourself? Or is it something more serious, like an illness?” He understands the implications that Yakov is making. That he might have chosen to end things with Victor because it would be easier than telling him he was sick. If that were the case, maybe this would all be easier.

“No, it’s not something physical. I just-.” He doesn’t know what to say. How can he express the deep hollow emptiness that feels like it’s eating him up every time he steps out onto the ice to compete. The feeling of how he’s just not good enough, for skating, for Victor.

Victor. Yuuri knows that he deserves so much better but his heart aches. Breaking up with him is the worst thing he’s ever had to do. There’s no way he’ll ever be able to move on from it. Victor had consumed his every action since he had seen him competing all those years ago on the TV at the ice rink. So, Yuuri’s decided that it’s just better to live out his life in obscurity, why couldn’t they accept that.

“You know, Victor has been trying to get a hold of you since they announced your retirement.” He’s spent too long thinking about Victor when Yakov drops that on him. He freezes, because why would Victor want to talk to him. They broke up, Yuuri’s the one who did that.

“He, I-”

What is he supposed to say to that, honestly. There’s a desperate part of his brain thinking about unblocking Victor’s number just so he can hear his voice one more time.

“He doesn’t want you to retire either.” It stings, those words. It’s like Yakov is physically trying to hurt him with those words. Why would Victor not want him to retire?

“Katsuki, you’re still there, right?” 

“I’m still here.” It’s all he can manage to get out. “Listen, I have to go.”

Yuuri is quick to hang up before Yakov can get a word in edgewise. Why do they all want him to keep skating? Don’t they see the damage it has caused.


	3. New Arrivals

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's been months since they broke up, now Victor is in Hasetsu.

The first few days that Yurio is in Hasetsu, Yuuri notices that he is constantly watching him. His usual intense gaze is focused on something about him and it’s unnerving. He feels like Yurio can see right through him at times. Maybe he hopes that by studying Yuuri, that he’ll figure out all the answers to the things he keeps asking him about or drive him to insanity; he wouldn’t put it past him.

He wonders if Yurio overheard his conversation with Yakov or if maybe he said something to him because after a lot of staring and various looks thrown his way, he opens his mouth about it.

“Are you feeling okay?” Yuuri pauses amidst doing some chores to see a look of concern on Yurio’s face as he asks him this.

“I feel fine. Why are you asking?” 

He’s met with a look of skepticism in response.

“It’s just, you look-” He gestures vaguely at Yuuri, trying to piece together what he wants to say. “And you don’t seem to be taking care of yourself.”

He’s not wrong, to be fair. He’s stopped doing a lot because of that hollow empty feeling that plagues him. Everything seems pointless and painful at moments, like he doesn’t deserve anything because honestly what has he really accomplished in order to deserve the things that he has.

“You look like you’ve lost weight, and I know you haven’t been training or skating. It’s not the same as when you’re training either. You look-” He stops, the thought of finishing the sentence seems painful.

“I’ve got to do this laundry, we can talk about this later.” Yuuri escapes quickly from the room, he knows that he’s never looked the greatest but this conversation is toeing uncomfortable boundaries.

He puts the dirty laundry into the washing machine and takes the now clean laundry out of the drier and folds it, trying to block out thoughts about the conversation they’d been having. Once it’s all folded he takes the basket and heads to put the laundry in the linen closet but only gets a short distance once Mari interrupts him.

“Yuuri, Mom needs you to shovel outside. We got some unexpected snow.” Mari grabs the basket from him. “I’ll deal with this.”

“Alright, Nee-chan.”

He dutifully heads over to the closet by the main entrance and pulls out the shovel and then opens up the door to go outside and gets a face full of wind and snow. Mari wasn’t kidding about the snow. He hears a bark and wonders if someone let Vicchan outside and he looks around, spotting a familiar poodle but it’s not Vicchan.

This poodle is much larger than him and with a quick glance he knows the collar that sits on his neck and it catches him off guard. Yuuri realizes he must have made a noise because the poodle’s head whips around, zoning in on him and two seconds later he has a flying poodle colliding with him. There’s excited barks and a tongue is lapping at his face knocking his glasses off.

He manages to get a grasp on himself, pushing up off the grown and the dog away. Just a little bit, to catch his breath, much to discontent whines.

“Makkachin, I know you missed me, but what are you-” He stops with a hand rubbing Makkachin’s ears to placate him and he spots the one person he doesn’t want to see in front of him. “Victor!”

He can’t help but shout in surprise. Obviously, if Makkachin is there, Victor would be too but a small part of him hoped that maybe Makka had learned how to fly by himself; despite how stupid it sounds.

More barks, less deep that definitely belong to his dog come from behind and then Vicchan is in between him and Makkachin. There’s jealousy and concern over this bigger poodle that Vicchan had never met that has tackled and is getting ear rubs from Yuuri. He clearly doesn’t like this one bit and is making it known while Makkachin looks at the smaller poodle in confusion. 

Yuuri is trying to calm him down when he is forced to remember that Victor is standing right in front of him.

“Yuuri.” His name comes out in a soft, breathless gasp from Victor’s lips. Yuuri tenses just hearing it.

“What are you doing here?” He asks him. Victor immediately looks hurt by this question and he regrets asking for a moment. But how can he not? They broke up. There’s no reason for Victor to show up here.

“Victor! Come and get your own luggage!” There’s an angry shout and Yuuri turns and sees Yakov.

He remembers that Yakov had planned on coming to get Yurio, after giving him a few days but he hadn’t heard any update to that. Considering that Victor is now also a part of that plan, there’s probably a good reason he didn’t update him. Maybe he planned to force them in a room together and talk, he’s not sure.

Victor glances back as he rushes to grab his luggage from the taxi that’s waiting off to the side. Yakov turns to address Yuuri in the meantime while Victor is distracted.

“I’m sorry, Victor must have overheard me booking the flight. I had no idea he came until we were already in Japan, I would’ve called to warn beforehand.” It’s an unusually sincere apology, coming from Yakov, and it makes a lot more sense now. It’s not the first time Victor has snuck behind Yakov’s back to do something he wouldn’t agree with.

Both of the dogs whine and he hears his mother come up from behind.

“Ah, our guests have arrived. Oh and they brought a poodle, Vicchan will have a playmate.” Vicchan doesn’t look pleased by this statement and huffs. Yuuri isn’t pleased either because his mom knew this was going to happen and didn’t warn him. She’s pleading ignorance in the matter.

When Victor comes back with his luggage, Yuuri makes excuses about having to shovel and lets his mother deal with checking them in. Even from outside he can hear the argument that starts, all in Russian, between the skaters and coach. There’s also soft whines at the door because Makkachin and Vicchan are waiting for him to come back inside.

There’s a part of him that considers risking frostbite and hypothermia by staying outside until they’ve gone to sleep but he quickly abandons that idea. Instead he sneaks back in through the side door and sneaks into his room to grab his skates and then slinks off to Ice Castle where he can hide for a few hours and work out his problems.

Yuuko is surprised to see him because he hasn’t been in since he came back to Hasetsu but she understands that he needs some time to himself and just nods him on. He ends up doing about an hour of compulsive figures before he wanders back to the edge of the rink where she’s waiting with a bottle of water. He takes a sip, thanking her.

“So, what’s on your mind?”

“Victor showed up.”

Her eyes widened in shock at the news. “Victor is here? Do you know why?”

Yuuri shakes his head. “I didn’t stick around, I chickened out and came here before we could really talk.”

“Well you can’t exactly hide here forever, he’s an ice skater, it’s the first place he’ll look.” Yuuko points out, and he knows. It’s a temporary solution at best.

He sighs and rubs his face. “I just don’t understand. We broke up, both of us wanted it. So why should he care about what I’m doing with my career choices?”

“You know I don’t believe that nonsense that you really don’t love him anymore, right? I’ve known you long enough to know how you really feel. It’s written on your face.” He turns away at the look she gives him. 

Why can’t everyone just leave this alone. He’s made the decision, it’s too late to go back now. He wouldn’t be able to handle the pressure if he did.

He skates a while longer before giving up and then makes the slow trek back home. Yuuri opens the door and finds that it’s relatively quiet. No yelling, no sign of any of their Russian guests.

“Welcome back, Yuuri.” His mom greets him as he enters.

“I’m home, where is-?” Yuuri leaves the end of that sentence hanging, she knows exactly what he’s talking about.

“I think they’ve decided to rest, they’ve had a long day traveling.” He nods and starts to head to his room when she stops him. “Do you want something to eat? I can make you Katsudon?”

He waves her off. “No, I’m not hungry right now.”

“You seem to be saying that a lot lately. Is there anything wrong?” Yuuri is silent and his mom is patient for the response. 

“No.” He walks away and makes it to his room. Just as his hand moves to open the door a voice comes from behind.

“Can we talk?” 

Yuuri stiffens, then looks up at Victor. He wants to melt as he sees Victor’s eyes. There’s a deep sadness in them as he looks at Yuuri and it makes him weak to see it. Victor should be happy, he’s no longer being weighed down by him, so why is he not.

“Please.” He’s begging now and Yuuri can’t deny him, he always had trouble resisting Victor.

He opens the door to his bedroom and stands out of the way.

“We can talk inside.”

There’s a look of relief on his face and Yuuri looks away as they enter his room. He shuts the door for privacy but doesn’t turn to look at Victor.

“Yuuri, please look at me.” But he can’t. Yuuri hears Victor step closer to him and he feels him standing a breath away. “Yuuri.”

The way he says it with a slight hesitation, just above a whisper. This is why Yuuri had blocked his number and practically everyone else's. If Victor had called him, saying his name just like this, he would’ve come running. His arms move and embrace Yuuri from behind. He pulls him tight to his chest, pressing his face into his neck, trying to touch him as much as he possibly can.

It’s painfully familiar, the closeness, the way Victor can’t not touch him. He doesn’t want to give in. It’ll just get worse.

“I was stupid.”

Yuuri can barely breathe as Victor starts to talk.

“You asked me to break up and I just said okay. I was so lost when it came to skating, that I didn’t even think about it. I didn’t think about what that really meant at that moment.” Yuuri can hear him choking back the sobs and Victor’s grip around him tightens.

“I didn’t even ask you why, I just accepted it. I should’ve screamed. Begged you to reconsider, make me understand. Why?  _ You can’t do it anymore. _ That’s bullshit, it’s not an answer.” There’s anger and hurt in his voice as it cracks. Yuuri feels the tears in his own eyes start to build. He can’t look. He can feel Victor’s tears, hot on his shoulder.

“It wasn’t until they announced that you were retiring, that it all felt  _ wrong _ .” 

“ _ Please, _ don’t do this. Not to convince me to not retire, I’m done.” Yuuri pleads with him to stop, he can’t do this.

“I’m not doing this as some intervention! I still love you! If anyone should be retiring, it’s me!” 

Yuuri whips around to face Victor and it shocks him enough to loosen his grip on Yuuri and look up. His hands still clutch at Yuuri’s shirt, tight in his grasp.

“No, you can’t! I’m the one that’s a worthless skater, that doesn’t deserve to be on the ice, that doesn’t deserve y-” He stops and slaps a hand over his mouth, realizing what he was about to say.

Victor’s looking at him in horror at his words as he pieces together what Yuuri was about to say. Tears are streaming down his face and his mouth is agape.

“Yuuri, why would you say something like that. That you don’t, what, deserve me? Why would you ever think something like that?” 

“Why do you think you should retire, you’re the best!” Yuuri counters, just as upset about Victor’s declaration.

“Because, it feels worthless. Like my medals don’t mean anything. Everyone expects me to win and the pressure, I just can’t do it anymore! Not when I can’t enjoy it” Victor stops as he says the words.

_ Victor, I can’t do this anymore. _

Suddenly, months after they were said in that hotel room, the meaning of the words make it to him. It was never about not loving Victor anymore. The pressure that Victor felt, that he had dealt with for years, had spilled over onto Yuuri. He knew the high pressure, the criticism that he faced.

It wasn’t Yuuri that believed that he didn’t deserve Victor, it was everyone else that made him believe that.

“Oh, Yuuri.”

He pulls Yuuri into himself again, cradling him to his chest. He whispers apology after apology.

“No one should ever make you feel like less, even me.” 

Yuuri shakes at those words. Why is Victor the one apologizing? He did nothing wrong. This is all his fault. He’s the one that’s not good enough.

“Please, don’t, I can’t.” He chokes out the sobs and he feels his knees give out, but Victor has him tight in his arms and lowers him gently to the floor. He keeps muttering reassurances to Yuuri and he feels exhausted. He gives in, just a little, because it feels nice to be in Victor’s arms.

When Victor realizes that Yuuri has fallen asleep from exhausting what was left of his energy, he lifts him up and puts Yuuri on his bed.Taking off his glasses that have gone askew and placing them on the bedside table, he tucks him under the covers and place a gentle kiss on his forehead. He stops to look at just how exhausted he is.

His skin is dull, and Yuuri’s eyes look sunken with dark bags under them. He’s missing that slight softness to his cheeks and body that he oh-so secretly loves despite Yuuri’s self-consciousness over it. Even in his sleep, Yuuri is frowning and stressed. Victor wishes he could do it over and take it all away.

There’s scratching at the door and muffled whines, also meowing? He opens the door to the room and finds a brigade of pets:Vicchan, Makkachin, and Potya. He wasn’t aware Yurio had brought his cat but he lets them all in because they’re obviously distressed and sensed what had been going on. They all quickly snuggle up to Yuuri on the bed.

“Watch over him, okay guys.” When he steps out of the room, he isn’t surprised to see Yurio lingering down the hall, pretending that he just happens to be there.

“You must have heard some of that, huh?” Victor calls out.

“You two got pretty loud. Is everything okay?” Yurio asks him tentatively.

Victor sighs, glancing back through the doorway at Yuuri. “I don’t know, he’s convinced that he doesn’t deserve anything. I don’t understand how he could believe that. He looks so broken, and I-I don’t know how to fix this.” 

Yurio stands there looking at him for a moment, lips pressed hard, like he’s debating something.

“He keeps saying he’s fine, but he’s lost weight and I don’t think he’s eating. The day after I got here, I saw him in the hot springs and…I could see his ribs. He’s not alright.” He tells him, the thoughts that have been plaguing him about Yuuri, the things that everyone had noticed about him lately.

Yurio can see the pain in Victor’s face as he tells him this, but Yuuri needs help and he won’t ask for it.

“I’m going to go discuss this with Yakov. There’s got to be some way we can help him.” 

Victor shuts the door to Yuuri’s room and heads to the room that Yakov is staying in and knocks on the door. A few seconds pass and he gets a tired growl, asking who it is.

“It’s Victor, I need to discuss something with you. It’s about Yuuri, it’s important. Please.” Victor adds on to his plea, Yakov knows that he hardly ever begs him for something. He hears a sigh, then footsteps and Yakov opens the door.

“Come in.” 

Victor walks in and shuts the door behind him.

“I’m assuming you two talked and considering that your eyes are puffy and red, you’ve been crying. What happened?” Yakov is resigned, he knew that this would happen but he hoped it would be after he had some rest. Nothing comes easy with his skaters.

“Yakov, he thinks he doesn’t deserve anything, that he’s a terrible skater. Yura says that he hasn’t been eating and that he can see his ribs. I think that it’s my fault.” Victor can’t help but start crying as he says it.

“Vitya, this is not your fault. You cannot blame yourself.”

Victor shakes his head. “I didn’t protect him from all the pressure of being in a relationship with  _ Victor Nikiforov the Skater _ , I didn’t even consider that people would try and tear him apart like they did with me! Of course it’s my fault!”

“Stop right there! I know the pressure everyone puts on you and how it hurt your relationship but it is not your fault! You are not the skating machine the world makes you out to be and you cannot take responsibility for other people’s perception of you or Yuuri. You’re human, they’re all just going to have to deal with it!” 

Yakov looks like he might pop a blood vessel with the anger in his voice. It’s not directed at Victor though, it’s a build up of all the stress at the situation they’ve found themselves in. Victor and Yuuri are still very much in love with each other, that is for sure. But skaters are fragile, and they’ve been crushed like glass. He sighs.

“Go sleep Vitya, we’ll talk about how to handle this in the morning.”

Victor doesn’t want to sleep though, he wants to fix this, he wants the Yuuri he loves back.

He wanders out down the halls back to Yuuri’s room. Makkachin pops his head up and wags his tail a bit happy to see him as he enters the room, but doesn’t move because Yuuri is still sleeping. Victor reaches out to give the poodle a few head scratches, then pulls the chair from the desk to sit in front of the bed.

Despite how sick Yuuri looks, in his sleep he looks peaceful like the stress of all that has happened doesn’t really exist. Maybe in his dreams there’s a happy world for him. Maybe it’s one where he and Victor are still together. Just skating for the love of it, no pressure. Maybe they live in a small town like Hasetsu, in a cozy house with their poodles and some children that look vaguely like a combination of the two of them. That would be the perfect world in his opinion.

He reaches out a hand and lets his hand caress Yuuri. It’s been so long since he’s been able to just touch him like this. These months apart have just been slow torture, he would do anything to take it back.


	4. Stay Close

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Victor and Yuuri are trying to work on things, the triplets release the video, and Victor learns some things.

As Yuuri feels himself coming to in the morning, he notices that the weight of his blanket seems to be heavier than usual, there’s an off-handed thought that he doesn’t remember going to bed either. He cracks in eyes open, squinting against the rising sun creeping in through the window until his sight adjusts. 

There’s a small horde of pets all sleeping on his bed with some part of their own bodies covering his. Potya is sleeping on his chest, curled in a tight ball. Below him, Vicchan is resting his head on Yuuri’s stomach, and then there’s another familiar looking poodle laying vertically on top of his legs, head nuzzling at his waist just below Vicchan. It takes a moment to register through his groggy sleep-addled brain that he knows exactly who that poodle is.

He jolts as he recalls Makkachin surprising him as he opened the door to go to shovel yesterday. Victor was here! A movement on the side of the bed catches his eyes and they widen at the sight of Victor sitting in the computer chair from his desk, head tilted forward into his chest having fallen asleep there. He’d shifted slightly in his sleep which was what caught Yuuri’s attention. He stops and watches Victor’s sleeping face. 

Yuuri can’t deny that he missed him, missed waking up right next to him and being able to see his face like this. He’s overwhelmed by it, especially as he remembers how their conversation went last night. He can’t be here right now, he just can’t. He needs to leave and go clear his head.

He starts the process of slowly extracting himself from the bed. Potya gives him a look of distaste as he moves the cat off to the side. Vicchan happily greets him with a light tail thump and lifts his head for a couple pets. Makkachin whines lightly and he shushes him and gives the bigger poodle some attention as well. Once he’s free of pets, he slides off the bed careful to avoid bumping into Victor.

Yuuri quietly moves about the room, changing into some workout clothes and washes his face to get rid of the crust of sleep from his eyes. As he starts to walk over to grab his duffel bag he stops as he looks at Victor sleeping in the chair. He really shouldn’t sleep like that. Yuuri bites his lip, contemplating his actions for a moment. If he’s really careful, Victor won’t wake up if he moves him onto the bed, he’s a deep sleeper anyway not much wakes him.

It takes a bit of effort, but he accomplishes it without waking Victor up. He tosses a blanket over him before he leaves with his duffel bag in hand. 

It’s still rather early so the only other people up are the normal early bird customers and his parents who he can hear in the kitchen, prepping breakfast. Yuuri slips out without saying a word.

Yuuko gives him a knowing look as she watches him come in but doesn’t say anything about it, she must be able to tell everything from the look on his face. He sighs and laces up his skates before getting on the ice. Yuuri feels like the compulsive figures aren’t doing much and moves on to step sequences and spins but he’s just not feeling any of it this morning. 

Normally when he needs to work through his thoughts he skates to one of Victor’s programs. Yuuri had admittedly done so just before and after their break up, so he contemplates it for a bit before he skates over to his phone on the edge of the rink and queues up the song from Victor’s free skate for this season.

His phone plays through a song before it while he does a warm up lap and then gets into place in the middle of the rink just as it finishes. Yuuri moves as the first few notes ring out of the speakers, he goes through the program without much changes besides downgrading the quads he can’t do to triples. It feels comfortingly familiar to be skating his routines again.

Yuuri strikes the final pose, looking up at the ceiling trying to catch his breath. A sudden bark breaks him out of his thoughts and he turns to the sound and sees Victor standing a short distance from the rink edge, Makkachin and Vicchan’s leashes loosely held in his grasp.

“Yuuri.” Victor stares at him in shock.

“What are you doing here?” He exclaims in shock at seeing Victor standing there, obviously having just seen him skate his routine.

“You weren’t back at the onsen, so I figured you might be here. You were skating my routine, why-why would you quit when you’re amazing?”

Yuuri looks away from him shamefully, he hadn’t ever meant for Victor to see him skate one of his routines ever. He didn’t even know that he’d done it when they were dating. He knows Victor won’t accept his explanation for why he retired, no matter how he feels about his own skater, he just wishes that he hadn’t seen him skate his routine.

“Ah! You’re Victor Nikiforov!” Axel, Lutz, and Loop yell appearing from out of nowhere as if they’d been summoned by the skater’s presence in the rink. Yuuri’s glad for their interruptance because it means Victor will be distracted from seeing him skate.

“Hey! You three are supposed to be heading to school, what are you doing here?” Yuuko scolds her daughters as she catches them.

“We heard you mention Victor was here last night, we thought he might come to the ice rink!” The three of them try to excuse themselves.

“Oh! You must be the Nishigori family! Yuuri has told me a lot about you!” Victor exclaims.

The girls surround him, pestering him for autographs, pictures and badgering him with questions. Yuuko scolds them again, telling them that they need to go to school and that they could talk to him later. Takeshi appears, obviously looking for his delinquent daughters and scoops them despite their protests.

“You’re going to school! Shut up!” Yuuri doesn’t envy him as they struggle against their father the entire way out of the building.

“I’m so sorry about that! We’ll leave you two alone now!” 

Yuuko waves goodbye to them before quickly leaving, taking any final buffer against Victor away with her disappearance. The room is silent with the exception of panting from their poodles.

“Yuuri, you can’t retire.” Victor pleads with him again.

“Victor, it’s already too late, I made my decision.” The look that comes across his face hurts Yuuri physically.

“No it’s not, you can call the JSF and ask to register for the season still, please you're making a mistake! No one whose skates like that could seriously want to quit skating!” He continues to argue with him.

“I don’t see how you can’t see what I see.”

Yuuri turns away from him and he hopes that Victor will just leave, but he doesn’t. He hears skates glide across the ice and looks over to see Victor coming over to him. He doesn’t know when Victor put on his skates.

“Don’t turn away from me! Please just look at me! I love you, so please just look at me.”

Victor’s hand gently cups Yuuri’s face and turns it toward him. He can see the unshed tears in his eyes as Victor gently strokes his face. He leans into the touch, breathing in his familiar scent. There’s a part of him that says he doesn’t deserve this, that Victor shouldn’t still be in love with him after he’s the one that asked to break up but there’s a selfish part of him that wants to be relieved that he’s here, to say okay.

“I’m sorry.” Yuuri’s not sure what he’s exactly apologizing for. Victor pulls him into an embrace and Yuuri finds himself pressing his face into his shoulder and he can’t stop the tears that come out, soaking his shirt. His body is shaking with the silent sobs as Victor gently cards his hand through his hair.

He’s not sure how long they stand there, with Victor holding him as he cries. The tears stop falling and they’re just standing there on the ice.

“Will you just skate with me for a while?” Victor asks him and he nods silently.

It’s nostalgic. They skate across the ice, holding hands, like they would when they were first dating. At first, Yuuri lets Victor lead them in a nonsensical dance as he hummed a tune under his breath, then he gets a mischievous glimmer and pulls Yuuri into a twirl. He yelps in surprise at first and then snorts in laughter as he realizes the game he’s playing.

Victor had often joked that they should do pair skating and would waste time prodding Yuuri into learning the different techniques based on his impulsive desires. He finds himself recalling the partial routine that they would fall into and moving along with Victor to imaginary music. They attempt to do a lift but it’s been months since they’ve done it and they stumble, colliding with the ice.

They keep themselves from hitting the ice too hard, at most they’ll have a few bruises.

“You okay?” Victor asks after he regains his breath from having the air knocked out of him on impact.

“Yeah.” 

He’s half laying on Victor, who he’s sure is getting soaked from laying on the ice. Yuuri starts to move to sit up but he feels Victor’s arms tighten on him and he stops. He catches Victor’s eyes and their hesitant look.

“You’re going to get soaked.”

“That’s fine.”

Yuuri rolls his eyes at the response. “Come on get up.”

“Nope.”

“Victor, you’re being childish.” Yuuri chides him.

“No, I’m being selfish. I haven’t been able to touch you in months, I intend to be as selfish as I want with you until you’re mine again and even then I’ll selfishly love you for the rest of eternity.” 

It’s a declaration of intent. Victor intends to get back together with Yuuri no matter how much he feels that he doesn’t deserve it. He’s going to tear down his walls and get to the root of those ugly thoughts that plague his love and burn them into an infertile desert so that those seeds of doubt would never grow or blossom again.

Yuuri’s face goes completely red, it makes him grin because he still affects him this much, as long as he can tug on that thread he’ll be able to fix this.

Makkachin and Vicchan whine from the spot where they’d been abandoned by Victor when he joined Yuuri on the ice, they’d been patiently waiting all this time.

“Ah, that’s right. I think some poodles demand our attention.” 

It had completely slipped their minds that their pets were there. Victor reluctantly gets up from the ice and they go and reassure them that they are not forgotten. They had been promised a walk which had been detoured with a stop at the rink. The two of them are bullied out of the rink by the dogs, who tug heavily on their leashes.

Victor feels like they’re making real progress, Yuuri isn’t straight out avoiding him anymore and they’re talking without tension between them. This is good. He’d hoped that they’d be able to continue on this positive note but it seemed like the universe was not cooperating with his plans. 

It could have gone well for twenty four hours at least. At least.

He wakes up to Yurio pounding on the door to his room frantically in the middle of the night.

“Why are you waking me up, it’s the middle of the-” 

“Yuuri is freaking out!” Victor gets cut off immediately.

“What? Why? What’s going on?” A strike of fear spikes through him, what could possibly have happened in the time they’d gone to sleep.

“Someone posted a video of Yuuri skating your free skate and now he’s freaking the fuck out. You need to go and calm him down, he won’t listen to me or anyone else.”

Halfway through the sentence Victor is already whipping out his phone and a quick search pulls up the video. It’s from this morning, when they’d been at Ice castle. There’s already a dozen articles about Yuuri, the scavengers that are the media have been patiently waiting for his resurgence since the two of them had broken up and Yuuri had retired, dropping off the face of the earth in the process.

There had been all sorts of baseless rumors flying around, reporters trying to get him to admit to some sordid drama or defame his ex-boyfriend. They were always looking to ‘expose’ him and resorting to underhanded methods to obtain personal information. Had someone leaked his whereabouts, followed him to Hasetsu and then stalked him until they could capture a private moment?

He bolts down the hall, and comes to find that even Vicchan is unable to get Yuuri to let him inside the room, whining and pawing at the door. Victor gently motions the poodle away from the door and knocks.

“Yuuri, are you okay? I know that this is freaking you out, I can help you figure this out.”

Based on what Yurio had told him, Victor doesn’t expect a response but then the door slides open. Yuuri stands there visibly shaking, eyes wide and red rimmed, skin blotchy. He reaches a hand out hesitantly and it’s all Victor needs as a cue to wrap his arms around him.

Yuuri’s hands clench as he grasps the front of Victor’s shirt, Vicchan nudging at their feet trying to offer his own reassurances. He reaches back to shut the door before gently guiding Yuuri to sit on his bed.

“Nishigori called me and told me that the triplets recorded the video and posted, by the time they took it down it was already too late.” Yuuri tells him through heavy sobs. “I just wanted to skate in peace and now they’re going to judge me for it, I just want to be left alone.”

It’s the straw that breaks his back, Yuuri is practically inconsolable. Until now, he’s never shown Victor how worried he gets over how others see his skating. Victor supposes that years of being the reigning champion has made him numb to others criticisms but it’s still odd, in his mind, Yuuri’s skating is beautiful and unparalleled in aspects that are under-appreciated in the current scoring system. He’s Japan’s number one skater and ranked at minimum top ten in international rankings.

But now he’s sitting here, listening to the man he loves fall apart, rambling on in a self-deprecating manner about his skating and all he can do is hold him.

“Yuuri it’s going to be alright, I promise you, I’ll do everything to make it.” Victor finds himself muttering his own reassurances repeatedly in Yuuri’s ear, a hand rubbing his back in a soothing motion. It ends up being the second night in a row that he tries to comfort him while Yuuri exhausts himself in tears until he passes out. It leaves a sinking feeling in his stomach.

Victor sits there, holding Yuuri still, adjusting him so that he can at least be more comfortable. A part of him knows that there is more to this and he finds himself pulling up the video again. He watches it on mute, avoiding the risk of waking up Yuuri. The video cuts off before Victor makes his appearance, so as far as social media knows Victor is not in Hasetsu.

Then he scrolls down to the comments and Victor has to admit that he never really looks at the comments unless it’s from someone he knows personally, he gets several hundred thousand on the regular and it’s unreasonable to look at them all. But now he’s reading the comments people are leaving and he can’t fathom how some of these people could claim to be his fans when they leave comments like this about Yuuri.

The comments are down right vile and nasty, there’s even _death threats_ , and other unmentionable things in the discussions. It makes him want to puke. They spend time picking apart everything about Yuuri, degrading him like he’s not even human. He looks at articles and finds that not even some of the reporters are exempt from bias as they shame and trash Yuuri for being ‘ _pathetic_ ’ and ‘ _attention seeking’_ or some other snide comment that portrays him in a bad light for skating to his ex’s free program.

It makes him angry, how dare they accuse Yuuri of such things? They had no basis for this speculation but it didn’t stop them from being hungry for whatever explanation that would satisfy their needs because apparently the one they had wasn’t good enough. Had they made these same comments while they were still dating, now he stops to wonder.

He specifically recalls the rule that Yuuri told him about Celestino giving him, about how he wasn’t allowed to have his phone during competitions. It annoyed him because he wanted to wish Yuuri good luck before his competitions and talk with him but he assumed the rules were to prevent him from being distracted like Yakov complained to him about. Now he’s questioning everything.

There’s one person who can give him answers and he just hopes that he’s not blocked.

Victor pulls up Phichit in his contacts and spends several minutes debating over how to word the message before taking the dive and sending it.

“ _Phichit, I need to ask you something important about Yuuri. I understand if you don’t wish to speak with me but I’m concerned for Yuuri right now. I need to know about the reason Celestino takes away his phone during competitions. I may have read some comments.”_

As he sends it, Victor wonders if Phichit is even awake or knows about the video. He’s still in Detroit as far as he’s aware, or maybe he’s gone home to Thailand? He might have to wait several hours or Phichit intends on ignoring him. He looks down as his phone buzzes.

Phichit has texted back. 

“ _I just saw the video.”_

“ _Also, what the fuck Nikiforov.”_

_You made the world’s largest mistake and now is when you want to fix shit?”_

Phichit is mad at him, and as Yuuri’s best friend he has every right to be.

“ _I_ _know I fucked up. I was too busy trying to live up to everyone’s expectations that I thought I ruined things with Yuuri and that he was right to break up with me. I didn’t realize half what was going on. I fucked up. I knew it the second I saw he was retiring. I wouldn’t have flown to Japan and got on a train to Hasetsu two days ago if I didn’t know that.”_

_"Can you please just answer me? He literally had a break down the second he found out about the video and he’s looked sick since I’ve gotten here.”_

_“I’m literally terrified about what this will do to him.”_

Victor hopes that Phichit hasn’t blocked him in the time it’s taken him to write out his plea. He’s already dreading the length of time it’s taking for him to respond.

_“You’re in Hasetsu?”_

_“You’re with Yuuri right now?”_

_“Yes.”_

There’s another pause in between Victor’s response.

“ _Yuuri has deep anxiety issues, sometimes he tends to scroll through social media and read the things people write about him and he believes it. That’s why Celestino takes away his phone.”_

_“There’s also more you should know.”_

_“I’ve been doing a social media damage check to see how much this is blowing up and someone leaked some things. You’re going to need to sick your fancy PR team on their asses. But I need you to call me. I can’t text you this.”_

He hits the dial button moments after reading the text.

“Yuuri’s asleep right now, so I’m trying to be quiet. What is it?” 

Phichit takes a deep breath and he prepares to explain what is going on to Victor.

“So, before you two broke up. We noticed that Yuuri started to spiral and he wasn’t acting right but we couldn’t get him to admit to anything-” He hesitates but continues on. “-but after you two broke up, it got worse. The JSF actually planned to send Yuuri to competitions anyway after he bombed nationals but Celestino pulled him from them.”

“What people don’t know, or at least they didn’t, is Yuuri passed out during practice and he had him hospitalized. Celestino had to put him under a psych evaluation and they’ve been treating him depression and an eating disorder. Someone leaked it all to the press about twenty minutes ago.”

Victor clamps his hand up against his mouth to keep himself from making too much noise, tears are already streaming down his face. He feels even worse than when he read the comments. He might actually throw up.

“Phichit, can you send me the information I need to give to my PR team, I have to go now and talk to them and Yakov before this goes too far. I’m sorry to hang up so suddenly, it’s just-” There’s no right way to react to the news, or even a right way to say anything about this. He just knows that Yuuri will not take this well and that he needs to handle it right then and there.

“I got it, understand completely. Just fix this.”

He carefully gets up without disturbing Yuuri and gives Vicchan full access to him so that he’s not entirely alone when he leaves the room. However, Victor nearly runs into Yurio as he leaves the room. The young teen was obviously still worried about Yuuri because he’d been clearly hovering around the room.

“Is he okay?” He says looking past Victor to where Yuuri is laying on the bed.

“It’s complicated right now but could you stay with Yuuri right now, I need to go talk to Yakov. It’s important.”

Yurio nods and then Victor heads off to Yakov’s room.

Despite all the grief that Victor has given him throughout the years, Yakov has always been quick to handle these sorts of situations. His coach is already on the phone with the public relations team, two steps ahead, firing off a million instructions on how to handle the situation. The media will be feeling his wrath.

Yakov hangs up the phone in frustration and turns to Victor.

“Why aren’t you with Katsuki?”

“I need to make sure that things are being handled, but it looks like you’re ahead of me on that.” Victor explains.

“You don’t need to worry about that, you need to worry about your boyfriend. I know about the leaked hospital records, I talked with Celestino already and he’s talking with the JSF and we’re handling this.” Yakov is already waving him out the door. “Go be with him.”

It makes him feel useless but he knows Yakov has the situation handled at this point. He detours to his room and retrieves Makkachin, who’d been left behind in the chaos and they head to Yuuri’s room.

Yurio has already decided that the best course of action is climb into bed next to Yuuri and wrap himself around him. He glances at Victor coming back into the room.

“I’ve decided I’m going to stay the night in here, if you plan on doing that too you better not move around too much and cause me to fall off the bed.”

It’s an entirely backhanded way of saying that they all need comfort but Victor’s not going to antagonize him over it. Instead he just nods and carefully lays down on the leftover space of the bed and they try to drift off to sleep. Things were going to get much more complicated when morning came.


	5. Small Steps

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yakov is taking care of the fallout and so is Yuuri.

Yakov rubbed his face with a deep sigh. He’d just gotten off the phone for the millionth time that morning. Everything was in chaos. 

In the short amount of time since the video had been leaked it had caused an uproar of rumors and speculation to seriously concerning violations of privacy. Yuuri’s private medical records had been leaked shortly after the video had come down and he’d been busy contacting the appropriate lawyers and their publicist to handle the damage control. Everyone wanted a statement on the matter and he wasn’t budging on their ‘no comment’ status until Yuuri had a say in the matter.

When they couldn’t get what they wanted, the media quickly moved on to trying to physically locate Victor. So of course it led to them realizing that Victor was already in Japan before the video had happened. Then there were more calls for statements and they started to hound the rink in St. Petersburg. Georgi had called in a panic because reporters had got rather aggressive with them outside the rink and they had to call the police.

Hasetsu was much calmer thankfully. He supposed that benefit was due to the small town and the actual sense of respect for privacy that Japan’s reporters seemed to have.

It was all a matter of what they do now.

There was no way Victor would consider leaving Yuuri to go back to train in St. Petersburg and neither would Yuri. With the state things were in right now, Yuuri wouldn’t be able to deal with the chaos there. From what he’d gathered from Celestino, Yuuri was in a tentative recovery state right now. He’d gained a small amount of weight back and had been seeing a therapist in Detroit but he’d regressed somewhat with the stress of moving back to Japan.

He obviously needed to get back on track, so he’d made a call to figure out what specialists were in the area as well. Victor had managed to talk Yuuri down this morning from having found out his medical records were leaked but he’d prefer it if he saw someone as soon as possible.

As it stands, Yakov was in the middle of a difficult decision as to whether or not to move his skating team to Hasetsu and face the wrath of Russia’s skating federation. 

He glances into the room that they’re all holding up in, Victor has attached himself to Yuuri in his familiar fashion. Yuuri has his toy poodle curled up in his lap while Makkachin rests his head on his leg. Yuri is sitting next to them with Potya in his lap as the three of them watch what they’ve previously told him to be an anime, not a children’s cartoon. Honestly he doesn’t know the difference anyway.

Yuri turns at the creak of his steps. “Yakov.”

The other two turn and look towards him as well.

“I wanted to ask your opinions on some decisions I want to make.” He starts off. Yuuri stops to pause the video and nods for him to go ahead.

“Obviously the pressure has taken its toll on everyone and because of that I don’t think St. Petersburg is the best place for our team right now. I think it would be better for everyone to get away from under the eyes of the media and if Yuuri feels comfortable with it, Hasetsu seems to provide more privacy for everyone to train.” Yakov watches Yuuri’s face for his reaction.

“I don’t have any problems with that.” He could tell that Yuuri was being honest, so he moved on to the next issue.

“Okay, the next matter of business. I think it would be best if you talked with a therapist as soon as possible. It may be difficult but the sooner you get help the better it will be in the long run. I’m looking to see if someone is available to see you today, if you’re ready.”

Yuuri can’t help but still at the next words. He’d been avoiding the topic when he’d come home and he knew what Yakov was saying was right but it didn’t make it any easier. Victor reaches over to squeeze his hand.

“We’ll be here, no matter what Yuuri.” He squeezes back and nods, not trusting his voice.

“I’ll let you know as soon as the appointment is finalized. You can always switch if you don’t feel comfortable with the therapist, you just have to try.” Yakov tells Yuuri and then continues on. “I know that you’ve claimed to be retired but after yesterday’s incident, I want to know if you are considering attempting to compete again. You don’t have to answer right away, obviously you still need time to recover and right now we don’t know how long that’ll be but whether it’s this season or maybe the next just know that this doesn’t have to be the end of everything.”

Yuuri’s already heard all of their opinions on the matter but he doesn’t have one of his own to be honest. He spends too much time second guessing everything and he feels that he can’t even trust his own head when it comes to the matter.

“I don’t know, it’s too much right now. I think i need more time.” Yakov tries to give him what Yuuri thinks is a reassuring look but Yakov has never been one for much emotion.

“That’s fine. Lastly, how do you want statements to the press to be handled?”

Yuuri takes a moment to stare at the ceiling, thinking about it. He was sick and tired of the media.

“No comment. I refuse to give them anymore, they’ve picked me apart as it is. They’re vultures, they can starve.”

Yakov nods and his phone starts ringing again and he leaves them alone to answer the call. Yuuri turns to Victor’s concerned face.

“Can we just go back to watching tv for now?”

“Sure.”

Trying to numb his mind with binge watching shows doesn’t save him from having to deal with the inner turmoil. And as he sits in the waiting room for the therapist Yakov got a hold of, he really wishes it could rot his brain like the adults had always told him it would as a child. Yuuri’s eyes catch the door to the waiting room open.

“Katsuki.”

Yuuri stands up and follows the assistant through the back offices and guides him to an open door where the therapist is waiting. She reminds him of Minako-sensei but without her strong presence of being a prima ballerina. Dr.Sasaki. She smiles gently at him and greets him, asking him to sit wherever he feels comfortable.

He sits in the large armchair in the corner. He can do this. Maybe. It’s only telling a stranger his deepest fears, thoughts and life’s problems. A stranger who can help him though. He has to remember that.

She has his file with all of the notes from his therapist in Detroit transcribed into Japanese for her. Yuuri wonders what’s written in there. Therapists aren’t supposed to be judgmental right?

“Katsuki-san, how have you been holding up? I know you just came home for the first time in a long while and certainly that’s a stressor. How long has it been?”

Stressful is an understatement in his mind. “It’s been five years.” He answers. 

She begins to ask him more questions, delving deeper into more personal questions as she asks them. Yuuri’s not actually sure how the conversation went. He was busy trying to hold everything together, just enough to not have to be hospitalized again because that was truly an awful experience he doesn’t want to experience any time soon. It’s hard enough to stay in the moment as it is anymore.

He does know that she asked about his skating, the pressure of competitions, about social media, the press and then Victor. How did they meet, how long were they together, how they broke up, how he came to Hasetsu and how he asked to get back together.

The harder questions, the ones that really bother him are the ones that stick with him.

Does he still have feelings for Victor? Yes. Why doesn’t he want to get back together with him? He can’t. Why not? He can’t answer that. 

Then they discuss his feelings towards his weight, about how he struggled to maintain it at a competitive weight, how he feels about food. Particularly about how his favorite food, his mom’s cooking, doesn’t taste the same. How he doesn’t have the motivation to eat. How his eating habits have changed from comfort eating to not eating at all. 

It’s uncomfortable, he doesn’t want to think about it, let alone talk about it. But she makes him. At the end she hands him a tissue box and he doesn’t realize that he’d been crying. Which is weird, he’s usually hyper aware when he cries, particularly because he tends to cry after skating, in front of practically everyone.

“I’m going to prescribe you some anxiety medication, something different from what you’ve taken in the past. It’s worked better for patients that have had the same side effects that you’ve had taking the others. We’ll try it for a month and see how it works. In the meantime, I want to see you once a week.”  
Yuuri didn’t realize that the therapist Yakov selected was also a psychiatrist but he’s good at covering all the bases.

The most uncomfortable part of the visit is planning out goals. Short term is to figure out food that he’s comfortable with. Long term is to build up to a healthy weight. The number she tells him is the normal weight range for his height and age makes him cringe when he steps on the scale and sees the difference.

Victor is waiting for him outside the office when he’s finally done. He feels shameful, that he knows what this place is and why he’s here. It makes Yuuri feel judged for having stepped into the building. Victor walks up to him and grabs his hand.

“You did good Yuuri, this is the first step.”

Yuuri hopes that Victor is right as he looks at his face for the first time stepping out. It’s the smile that he loves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a little shorter but it's up. Check for updates on my tumblr thescribblerqueen or on Ko-fi at ScribblerQueen.


	6. Unexpected

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yuuri is working on his recovery and Victor comes to need his support as well.

It’d been several weeks, and several appointments with his therapist. Yuuri had made progress, at least that’s what everyone kept telling him. He can still feel himself struggling often. He’s leaving another session at the office and glances at the time. Based on the time the others should be finishing up with practice at the rink. Today’s session had been emotionally taxing to say at least. The feeling kept building under his skin with each session and he couldn’t get rid of it.

He knows that he needs to work out his thoughts and there’s one sure way that’s always helped him, he’s just been avoiding the rink since, well, everything.

Yuuri knows that he wants to be on the ice, he’d grabbed his skates and gear before his appointment in preparation, he just needed to suck it up. He starts walking towards Ice castle, enjoying the warm sun peaking through the clouds giving relief to the cold weather. Once he arrives he sees that Victor and Yakov are still practicing, normally they’d be done by now. Victor seems exhausted, more than normal. Yakov sighs as he watches him finish up.

He sets his bag down on the bench, causing Yakov to glance over at the noise.

“I didn’t expect to see you here today.” Yakov says looking down at his bag.

“I’ve been thinking about it. I need to work some things out.” Yuuri responds looking back to Victor on the ice. “How was practice?”

“He’s off, he’s been off. I think I may need to enforce a break for a few days.” He doesn’t look happy about it. Yuuri knows that it’s just his way of displaying concern.

“Victor! That’s enough! Get off!” Yakov shouts out and Victor begrudgingly skates over to the edge of the rink, he’s frustrated. He seems a little better once he realizes that Yuuri is there.

“Yuuri! Are you going to skate? I’ll stay if you want me to.” Victor immediately offers which only gets him scolded by Yakov. He begrudgingly gives up on his offer, sulking off the ice to do his cool down exercises.

Yuuri slowly begins to grab his things out of his bag, heading to the locker room to change into a more appropriate skating outfit quickly and then heading back to the bench to put his skates on. Takeshi is going over the ice with the Zamboni so he takes his time while he finishes resurfacing the ice. Off to the side Yakov is going over Victor’s mistakes during practice, and simultaneously chastising him for also messing around.

“Yes, yes. I know Yakov. You don’t have to yell at me, that’s mean.” Victor pouts at his coach, causing Yuuri to smile slightly.

“It’s the only way you listen. Now you have the next few days off, you need to rest properly as an athlete. Maybe you can get your physical done for the ISU in the meantime.” Yakov says as he dismisses his complaints.

Yuuri finishes adjusting his skates and heads onto the ice. At first he just does compulsory figures for a while, listening to the sound of his skates cutting the freshly resurfaced ice, as he readjusts. Yakov and Victor disappear after a while, he assumes that they left to give him privacy. Eventually Yuuko wanders out of the skate rental area to check in on him.

She brings him a water bottle, which Yuuri takes gratefully.

“Do you want me to put on some music?” Yuuko offers as he takes a sip. 

“Sure, can you put on my practice playlist on my phone?” She nods in response to his request and takes his phone and hooks it up to the audio system. A few moments later the first song filters through.

He’s never used these songs for any of his programs, he had wanted to but they were too far out of his comfort zone. So instead they ended up as his warm songs. Sometimes he would work on step sequences for parts of songs that he felt particularly inspired by but those too never made into his programs because they never fit with other songs the way they did for the one he made them with.

As the song continues, Yuuri absentmindedly starts piecing together fragments of a program, improvising most of it from ideas that have been lingering around in his head. This feels nice, just doing what he wants with no pressure. The song ends and then he continues on with the next one. 

Somewhere along the line, Yuuri starts to create a story in his head of a ballet. He’s the ballerina, dancing for himself alone in the woods and along comes a prince, Victor, who wants to dance with him. In his mind the story has no point of conflict, only love and passion between the two and a happy ever after. There’s a treasonous thought that makes him think about how unfortunate that real life can’t be that way. He shakes it off.

Eventually, he exhausts himself and Yuuri finally abandons the rink for the night to head home.

A few days later, Yuuri wakes up and makes his way out to the main area of the onsen. It’s early still and Victor is sitting at one of the tables looking at his phone with his face scrunched up in mild confusion.

“Good Morning.” He greets him quietly, grogginess seeped in his voice.

Victor brightens when he hears Yuuri, head immediately turning towards him and smiling.

“Yuuri! Did you sleep well?” He asks immediately.

“Somewhat.” Yuuri replies noncommittally.

“Is something wrong?” He then says gesturing to Victor’s phone.

He of course quickly tries to reassure Yuuri. “Not really, I’m just having some difficulty reading the email the doctor’s office sent me. My Japanese isn’t as good as I thought.”

Victor can only admit his issue sheepishly. Yuuri wordlessly holds his hand out for his phone in order to translate it properly. Victor obliges and then makes himself comfortable by wrapping his arms around him, pressing his chest against his back as he rests his head on Yuuri’s shoulder as he watches him read the email.

“It says that the doctor wants to send you for some follow up blood work.” Yuuri reads out a summary of the email.

“Huh? But he already did that? He wants more?” Victor asks him confused.

It is weird that the doctor wants more blood work done on top of the usual mandatory work order for ISU requirements.

“Maybe there was a miscommunication? I can talk with the doctor for you if you want?” Yuuri suggests.

“Can you? Yakov already told me I can’t go back on the ice until I get my physical cleared and it’ll be annoying if I can’t because there’s a mix up with the blood work.” 

They call the doctor’s office and Victor gives them a confirmation that Yuuri is allowed to talk to them about his medical information, they confirm that Victor does have to go have more blood work done. Yuuri feels a twinge in his chest as he sees Victor’s anxious response.

“I’ll go with you, it’ll be fine.” He promises, hoping to comfort him.

“Thank you, Yuuri.”

Yuuri is able to call and get an appointment for the afternoon and they take the train out to the next town over to the office. He finds that he keeps reaching out to hold Victor’s hand in comfort, squeezing it firmly. It’s the least he can do, Victor had literally relocated the entirety of Yakov’s team to Hasetsu in order to be here for him even though they were broken up.

The blood work is simple enough in itself but it doesn’t keep them from being worried. They won’t be able to get results for a few days either. After the appointment, Yuuri distracts Victor by pointing out a fancy looking boutique that he knows will entice him into a little impulse purchasing. He does have to hold his tongue when Victor starts picking out some things for him because he doesn’t want to spoil the mood and Yuuri would just melt under his puppy dog eyes anyway. 

A few days later, Victor has a follow up appointment with the doctor and Yuuri goes with him just to make sure everything goes smoothly. They’re quickly shown to a room to wait but being there makes Yuuri more uncomfortable than he expects. The bleak whiteness and sterile cleaning smell of the room reminds him of his hospitalization a few months back, he tries to relax for Victor’s sake but the wait isn’t helping.

Finally, after what seems to be forever the doctor enters the room.

“Ah, Hello Victor and you must be Katsuki-san, I’m Dr.Okura.” He greets them.

“It’s nice to meet you.” Yuuri returns the greeting.

“Now I know that you’ve come here for some answers because I’ve sent you for blood work twice now. But I’m afraid that I don’t have many, in fact I have more questions.” Yuuri frowns deeply at this news, especially as he starts to translate it to Victor.

“Is something wrong?” Victor asks, and he grips Yuuri’s hand tighter.

“It’s just that your blood work raised some concern and we can’t seem to rule anything out or determine what the cause is either, I didn’t want to alarm you anymore than necessary until we can do some more tests but I wanted you to be aware of what’s going on.” Dr.Okura continues to explain to them.

“So, I have to do more tests until we have an answer?” Victor repeats.

“Yes, unfortunately.”

Victor is silent on the way home. They went from the doctor’s office immediately to the hospital to have some scans done as soon as possible and the ordeal was exhausting for the both of them. They’d also been gone way longer than either of them had expected for that day. Yuuri had some foresight to keep in touch with Yakov and update him on the matter while he waited for Victor to return as he sat in the waiting area this time around.

Two very concerned poodles greeted them immediately at the door once they entered the onsen. Victor bent down and immediately scooped Makkachin into a tight hug, the dog returning his affection with wet kisses.

Hiroko appears from the kitchen area and greets them as well.

“Welcome back, I’ve heard you two have had a long day. I thought you two could use some soup, it’s good for you.” She remarks without really touching on the subject.

Yuuri wants to decline instinctively at first but then remembers that it would probably upset Victor if he rejected the food. He already has enough to be concerned about after today and he doesn’t want to worry him. So Yuuri accepts the bowl quietly and the two sit down and eat with the poodles cuddling up to them.

The other Russian skaters seem to have made themselves scarce, probably at Yakov’s doing because they tend to be a lot to handle. It makes it oddly quiet in the onsen, Yuuri thinks. He glances over at Victor, who is still quiet. It hurts to see him like this.

Victor ends up snuggled next to him in his bed, head resting over Yuuri’s heart, that night. To be fair it already had been happening most nights more than not but, this was the first night since they’d broken up that he was okay with it. Yuuri still cared deeply for him, even if he didn’t want to admit it. He wanted to do more to comfort him but he was never good with words. But Victor’s way of communicating had always been by touch, so Yuuri would respond to him with the touch of affection that he needed right now.

Two days later the doctor has an answer for them. 

There’s a concerning mass on one of Victor’s kidneys and it’s concerningly large and pressing up against the neighboring internal organs, putting stress on them. The doctors don’t know how serious it is yet, they’ll need to do a biopsy in order to determine that but the doctors want to remove it as soon as possible. It also means that it’s going to seriously affect any plans of Victor competing this season, not that he’d given Yakov a full confirmation on that.

“Victor, how do you want to handle this?” Yakov asks Victor as Yuuri sits next to him. Victor is squeezing his hand painfully tight but Yuuri is squeezing back just as hard. 

This is absolutely terrifying. The idea that Victor could be deathly sick. He would do anything for this to not be happening right now.

“We’ll have to tell the ISU that I’m withdrawing from the grand prix, just that for now. It’ll take two months before I’m back on the ice, let alone able to do quads and have two finished routines before the qualifiers. And that’s the best case scenario.” Victor says decidedly after a long pause of silence.

“And if it’s not the best case scenario?” Yakov questions.

“Let’s wait until we know. I don’t want to withdraw from nationals just yet.” Victor responds.

After they finish discussing things with Yakov, Victor convinces Yuuri to take a walk over to the ice rink.  
“You know you’re restricted from the ice Victor.” Yuuri had started to chastise him but then Victor explained.

“Not me, you. I want to see you skate. All I want to see is you skate.” Victor had responded.

So he’d grabbed his skates and they went. Yuuri is half surprised that Victor doesn’t even attempt to sneak his own skates past him.

“What do you want me to skate?” He asks once his skates are on.

Victor seems to contemplate the question over but he doesn’t have a clear answer.

“Could you do my free skate but like how you would do it?” Yuuri tilts his head at the way Victor poses the request.

“What do you mean by that?” He decides to question.

“It’s just, I think you have a better way of interpreting and expressing the music you skate. You have this way of embodying it and there’s a part of me that thinks that my version was-” Victor searches for the right word. “-lacking I guess. But when you were trying to imitate me, it was slightly different. Like you were looking at it differently but it was covered up by my version. I don’t know, does that make any sense?”

To be honest, it doesn’t make any sense to Yuuri but he’s willing to try. Victor goes to hook up the music and while he does Yuuri takes a moment to look back at the lyrics that Victor had once shared with him. Usually, when he’s working on a skate it’s important for him to figure out how the songs connect with his own personal feelings.

Victor sets the song on repeat for him so that he can get a feel for it and warm up while he’s thinking about the movements.

Maybe it’s the fact that the lyrics aren’t in a language that he speaks, so he never paid attention before, but it’s ironic that Victor chose a song about heartbreak well before they were headed on that path. And maybe it’s the reflection of therapy that’s making him notice it now as he thinks about the words that play overhead.

Stay Close to me, don’t go away.

I’m afraid of losing you.

He still loves Victor, even if Yuuri can’t say it out loud. And this surgery means that he could lose him permanently if the results turn out for the worst. But at the same time these lyrics are playing out their story in it’s opposite path. It’s more about finding someone who is alone as you are and suddenly it changes everything. It’s about reaching out and trusting each other to take the leap of faith to be in love in the end.

Yuuri and Victor had started madly in love in the beginning, only to fall apart and refuse to say what they meant to each other. All the ugly thoughts that clouded his mind. Now they were broken. He wasn’t sure how they could fix it either.

Maybe if they had met differently, this would be their story. Maybe if they’d fallen apart before they met, they would be happy now.

Yuuri pieces these thoughts together as best as he can and skates what is still an incomplete story, but Victor still watches him.

The day before the surgery, Yakov forces him to go to another therapy session. He makes a good argument that Yuuri can’t support Victor if he can’t support himself, so he goes. It still feels weird, telling a stranger about the thoughts in his head.

“And how do you feel about all of this?” Dr.Sasaki asks him.

But Yuuri can’t figure out how he actually feels about everything. It’s a big overwhelming mess that he can’t make sense of.

“Don’t worry if you don’t have an answer right now, I’m here to help you work through these emotions. Your break up with Victor was complicated and now you’re in a situation where both of you are trying to help each other through incredibly hard points of your life despite that because you two still care for each other. It’s going to be confusing.” She tries to reassure him.

Yuuri doesn’t feel any relief from the appointment, it’s a little too hopeful at this point. They won’t know until after the surgery how bad it is. He can’t move forward until he knows. 

As he walks home, Yuuri detours to pray at the shrine. If any god out there can make tomorrow’s outcome be a good one he’s willing to try to weigh their chances.

“I will do anything for Victor to be okay. Please Kami-sama.”

The hospital chairs are hard and almost unbearable to sit in. Yuuri is exhausted from their early morning start and the coffee is not helping him. He tries not to jostle Yurio as he shifts to get comfortable, he’d somehow managed to fall asleep with his head resting on Yuuri’s shoulder. The teen had been rather somber since the news about Victor’s surgery. Even though he doesn’t want to admit it, Victor is someone Yurio cares about. 

Mila and Georgi had wandered off to find some food for them. Yuuri is making an extra effort today to achieve his goals and gives them permission to pick something for him. He’ll eat whatever it is, for Victor. He can’t have Victor worrying about whether or not he ate while he was in surgery.

It’s midway through the afternoon by the time Victor’s doctor appears, Yuuri stands up immediately, accidentally forgetting about Yurio who nearly falls over due to the abrupt movement.

“How is Victor?” Yuuri asks immediately.

“The surgery went perfect, he should have a smooth recovery. The test results came back as well and there’s no abnormalities, the mass was completely benign. We’ll just have to keep an eye on it in the future.” Dr.Okura informs them.

The group sighs in relief, with Mila letting out a cheer and Georgi sobbing.

“He’ll be brought to his room from recovery in a few minutes, then you can visit him.” He tells them.

“Thank you so much.” Yuuri bows to the man.

When he finally sees Victor again, the weight falls from his shoulders. He’s still sleeping off the anesthesia and looking rather unkempt but he’s okay and that’s what matters to Yuuri. He waits until the others leave him alone with Victor and he gently reaches over to brush his bangs away from his forehead and presses a kiss to his forehead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry that it was kind of a longer wait that I expected to happen for the next chapter, I hope you enjoyed it.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you all enjoyed it! You can check for updates at https://thescribblerqueen.tumblr.com.


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